


smarter than the tricks played on your heart

by carpenter



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, High School, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:32:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpenter/pseuds/carpenter
Summary: When Erin is with Abby, she doesn't think of herself as Ghost Girl, and that's the best treat of their friendship, even better than the way Abby's eyebrows move when she talks about physics.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shadaras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadaras/gifts).



Erin sizes the new girl up out of the usual academic interest — the high school demonstrably isn't big enough for any cliques to form far enough from the center to include Erin, so change doesn't hold any hope for her, but she's stuck in this ecosystem for another 19 months, and it behooves her to keep track of the pecking order.

The new girl wears jeans and a Joy Division t-shirt, so she could be one of the goths, but she wears glasses and has no lipstick, no obvious piercings, and no leather jacket, so it's probably not going to be the goths.

The new girl is in AP Physics, and pays a lot of attention in class, so it could be the nerds, except for the small detail that the new girl is a girl, and, more damningly, the new girl doesn't seem to shave her legs (Erin notices in the locker room), and the new girl's eyes seem to track other girls and skim over boys (Erin notices passing in the hallway). The nerds are unlikely to take her either, Erin concludes with a little sour schadenfreude.

In the new girl's shoes, Erin would hasten to develop an interest in theater tech and throw herself on the mercy of the drama kids, but the new girl obviously isn't going to ask Erin for advice. The popular kids are clearly out of the question for her, and that sums up the school.

Erin classifies the new girl as a probable loner, dismisses her from mind, and goes back to her routine. Long experience has taught her that even loners know better than to hang out with Erin Gilbert, and there's no reason to believe that Abby Yates will be any different.

* * *

Erin doesn't think about the new girl much again until the day AP Physics covers the second law of thermodynamics. Everyone in class gets very interested — the goths chatter excitedly about the inevitable ascension of chaos, the theater geeks swoon over Tom Stoppard, the nerds wave their hands about the impossibility of perpetual motion.

Abby Yates sits in the middle of the excitement and just asks, "When was this discovered? Has it been proven? What are the applications?" and scribbles notes on her pad of paper at a rate disproportionate to how fast Mr. Mulligan is speaking. Erin is struck by the new girl's look of discouragement — she doesn't understand it. When they've just learned why entropy is always increasing and hot chocolate always becomes room-temperature and an engine can never be 100% efficient, how can someone who is clearly smart and paying attention be sitting there with that "great, another disappointment" expression?

Erin looks at Abby, puzzled, for long enough that the other girl looks back. Eye contact is definitely one of the forbidden actions under the Erin Gilbert code of conduct, and the new girl may not know that yet, but she may. Erin looks down at her desk quickly — she can feel her face turning red — and keeps looking down for the rest of the period.

Erin is shoving books into her locker after class when she hears "hi" from behind her. This is not a normal occurrence in Erin's universe. Occasionally she'll get a "How's it hanging, Ghost Girl?" but usually no one talks to her at all. "Hi" is effectively unprecedented. Erin looks up, startled.

It's the new girl. "Hi," she says again, "I saw you in physics class. You looked like you might have something interesting to say."

This goes completely against all of the social rules as derived by Erin, but she is startled into honesty, "I just couldn't understand why you looked so disappointed. Poets and madmen notwithstanding, the second law of thermodynamics is cool. Isn't it?"

Abby shrugs. "It's cool, but it's been known since the 19th century. I can't wait to get out of high school and find out that all the problems in science haven't been solved already. Unless they have, which would be pretty awful."

"Only 589 days to go," Erin says, reflexively, then winces, unsure of the consequences of letting the daily countdown slip outside of her own head. But the only consequence seems to be Abby's smile. She has a nice smile, and seeing it encourages Erin to try breaking the social contract a little more.

"If you're looking for unsolved problems, there's string theory," Erin says. "And unified field theory. And I think maybe a bunch of stuff in astrophysics, new stars and planets but also some new stuff about how to find stars and planets. Or if you like math, maybe a clean solution for the four color theorem. Or the full set of pentagons that tile the plane..."

Erin trails off because Abby is looking at her closely, making a lot of eye contact, and it makes Erin nervous. This is her first real conversation at school in months, and she is probably flunking it.

Abby nods, though. "Those are good ideas. I don't know if any of them is what I want to discover, but they're a good start. I have to get to class now. See you around, Erin," Abby says, and heads off down the hall.

* * *

Apparently Erin didn't fail the conversation, because just like that, Abby is her friend. They sit next to each other in classes, they talk in the hall. They don't eat lunch together because Abby's previous school had a different history track, so Abby is catching up on last year's world history coursework during lunch periods. But they walk over to Abby's house after school, the first time Erin has been to a friend's house since she was 10.

Abby's house is crowded and messy, full of siblings and parents and pets, and they hang out in the room Abby shares with two sisters, or in the basement or the backyard if the sisters are around. They do normal teenage friend things that Erin has never done before, gossip about classmates and work on their homework and snack on things they find in the refrigerator.

Erin watches Abby's hands, moving animatedly as she describes an astronomy documentary Erin totally needs to watch, fast and careful as she folds printer paper edges into elaborate springs, flashy and careless as she pretends to be able to play her brother's guitar. Sometimes Erin finds she has fallen silent and lost her place in a conversation because she was distracted by watching Abby's hands, but she doesn't get the impression that Abby minds.

  


Abby invites Erin to spend the night, another ritual which is no big deal to every other American teenager on Earth but which Erin has never done before. They make tidy beds of sleeping bags and couch cushions in the basement, and eat sausage and mushroom pizza while watching Real Genius, which Abby has memorized but Erin had never seen.

They make hot chocolate with little marshmallows, and lean against the basement walls. Erin impresses Abby with a story about young Lise Meitner attending Max Planck's lectures. That reminds Abby of some of her dad's department politics horror stories from Indiana University, where he was a professor before the family moved to Michigan.

"Want to hear a real horror story, though?" Abby asks with a light in her eyes. She doesn't wait for Erin to answer. "We should really have a campfire for this, but I'll make do. I heard it at scout camp from a girl who lived in Evansville, and she swore it was true.

"She was in the library, sitting in the stacks reading her way through Nancy Drew, and she got forgotten after closing time. When the lights turned off, she realised she'd been left alone, and went to try to find the light switch. On her way down the hall, she heard a sound from the bathroom, like the sink faucet turning on, and then after a few seconds it turned back off again. So she went into the bathroom and turned the light on... but no one was there."

Erin stares at Abby, unable to look away. From the moment she figures out where this story is going, a drumbeat of panic sets up in her head and won't let her move. When she is with Abby, she doesn't think of herself as Ghost Girl, and that's the best treat of their friendship, even better than the way Abby's eyebrows move when she talks about physics. But that's all about to end because there is only one real possibility here — Abby is pulling her leg, and the best thing to happen to Erin in years is about to be dragged down into the same pit as the rest of Erin's childhood.

Abby is still talking, saying how the girl left the bathroom and saw a woman wearing all grey sitting at a table in the reading room, and for one moment the Lady in Grey looked into her eyes, and then the girl fled the library and never read Nancy Drew again.

Erin shudders. "Really?" she asks.

Abby laughs. "No, of course not really. I think she was just making excuses for why she didn't like to read..." Abby trails off, looking at Erin. "Hey, are you okay? What's wrong?"

"You're probably the only person in Kalamazoo who doesn't know this," Erin says bitterly. She can feel her face warming as she speaks, and she has to put her mug of hot chocolate down because her hands are shaking. "I saw a ghost when I was a kid. For real. She haunted me at night for a year, and everyone at school found out, and that's why I still don't have any friends eight years later." Erin is terrified that Abby will think they are still trading ghost stories and she'll have to say all this again, but apparently Abby knows Erin can't fake the bright red of her face.

"What did the ghost do?" Abby asks.

"Mostly just stood there staring at me, at the foot of my bed," Erin mumbles, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for Abby to laugh at her.

"Could she walk through walls? Or did she walk on the floor like a living person would?"

Erin considers the question despite herself. "I don't think I ever actually saw her move around. She would just be there when I opened my eyes, and then in the morning she'd be gone."

"Did she glow? What color? Could you see through her? Was there anything else weird in the room, like sounds or smells?"

"Yeah, she glowed kind of a blue light, and was translucent. I'm not sure about anything else, maybe there was kind of a chemical smell. Why?"

"Well, light has to be reflected off or emitted from something, right? So if the ghost was transparent, it couldn't be emitting the light itself, and a blue light wouldn't be a reflection of anything in your room, so it would have to be, like, some other glowing substance on the surface of the ghost? Maybe that would have something to do with the smell?"

"I don't know." It's an interesting question, but Erin isn't willing to put this off any longer. "This isn't something I think about any more than I have to. Look, if... if you're going to point and laugh and never speak to me again, why don't you just do that and get it over with, and I'll see if my parents can come pick me up or something?" Erin sniffles and her nose is running and she doesn't have a kleenex because of course why shouldn't this be as mortifying as possible.

Abby looks puzzled. "Why would I laugh at you? I just wanted to see if I could figure anything out about the ghost."

"You don't think I'm crazy?"

"Those other kids are all idiots. I've never met anyone as smart as you before, and if you think you saw a ghost, then it's that simple, you saw a ghost."

Erin is crying for real now, and Abby scoots over on the rug and hugs her. Erin can smell Abby's shampoo and feel her glasses against the side of her face, and she is pulled out of her fear by the awareness of Abby's arms around her back.

They talk a little longer, about parents and classmates and the unpleasantness that is gym class, and then go to bed. Erin barely sleeps at all, still caught in the adrenaline of the fear of losing her only friend and the excitement of maybe _not_ losing her only friend and the memory of the scent of Abby's hair.

* * *

Two days later, Abby shows up at Erin's house wearing a backpack that looks like it weighs 50 pounds. She's obviously excited about something, but she waits to say anything until they've said dutiful hellos to Erin's mom, pilfered fruit and walnuts from the depressingly healthy offerings in the Gilbert family kitchen, and reached Erin's room and closed the door.

Erin's room hasn't needed to be repainted since she was seven, and she has managed to very nearly hide the pink walls with every astronomy, chemistry, physics, or math poster she has gotten her hands on in the past five years. She keeps the room tidy otherwise, so it's easy to find a place for Abby's bag and their plates of food. Erin straddles her desk chair, leaving the bed to Abby, who is too excited to sit.

"I got my dad to drop me off at the university library with his card. Don't worry; I told him it was for a school project. Here, look." Abby starts pulling books out of the overstuffed backpack.

"I started with chemistry, because I still think that has to be important — living people don't glow blue, so there has to be some kind of reaction going on there. Then, okay, biology... ugh, I'm not going to understand these at all, I've always been terrible at bio, but this has something to do with the body or the brain, so we're going to have to struggle through it. Are _you_ any good at bio? This one is physics — I figured human energy is cell-based, so whatever makes ghosts move has to be something different, it'll have to fit into a theory of energy somehow, and honestly I don't know that either of us is going to be able to make heads or tails of this book, it's all multivariable calculus but we have to start somewhere. And this is just a guide to haunted buildings in southern Michigan, in case we want to go do some field research."

Erin swallows past a lump in her throat, watching Abby talk. _She's beautiful when she's this enthusiastic,_ Erin thinks. But it's no use; she has to put a stop to this.

"Abby, what is all this? What do you think you're doing?"

Abby blinks. "I'm making a plan for how we're going to scientifically prove the existence of ghosts and get our Nobel prize. I know this is pretty disorganized and a lot of this stuff is out of our depth now, but don't worry about it. We're just getting started."

Erin wishes she didn't have to say this, but she does. "We are not getting started. I saw a ghost, and it ruined my life. I haven't had anyone to talk to for eight years. Every time I ask my parents for something, anything, they look at me like, 'Are you still crazy? Are you still lying? Are you going to embarrass us some more?' I don't want any of that; I want to be normal and have a normal life. So I'm not going to join your study group or whatever, because I don't want to think about ghosts ever again."

"But... don't you want to find out what you saw?" Abby looks comically appalled. Erin would laugh if she wasn't so upset.

"No, I don't. I want to live through another year of hell in this high school, then go to college somewhere where no one has ever met me, and never talk to anyone about what I saw again. And if you really won't let this drop, then I guess that includes you. So good luck with your Nobel prize."

Abby turns pale, and Erin feels a little guilty. "Fine," Abby snaps. "I thought I'd finally met someone who actually cared about science, but I guess not. Seems like I should leave then."

Erin watches her shove books into her bag and stalk out, and for all that they've only known each other for a few months, she feels like she's watching the best thing she's ever had in her life walk out the door. She wishes Abby had been asking for anything else, but she just can't do this, so there it is. Oh well. Only 524 more days to go.

* * *

Erin stays mad at Abby for a ten day period that feels like months.

Abby is quiet in physics class, no questions about the history of discoveries, no enthusiastic scribbling on a notepad, her mouth set in a line. Erin glances at her by accident then wishes she hadn't, so she tries to just stare at her desk. You'd think she'd be used to the Erin Gilbert code of conduct by now.

But she can't readjust to the silence. She does her homework in silence, and attends gym class in silence, and sits at dinner with her parents in silence, and calculates definite integrals in silence, and finds out about an astronomy lecture at the library in silence and has no one to go with. She lived this way for years, and thought "if only I had someone to talk to," and that was barely tolerable, but "if only I could talk to Abby" is intolerable.

On day 514 until the end of high school, Erin skips out of class two minutes early so she can be waiting at Abby's locker when she shows up. Abby frowns to see her but doesn't turn away, and Erin's palms are sweating when she says, "I'm sorry. Can we be friends again?"

Abby smiles like she can't help herself. "Sure, okay. But I get to call you Counter-Enlightenment Girl, right?"

"No you do not. What if instead we go to that coffee shop with the soda fountain, and see how many different colors we can make by mixing syrups?"

Abby cheerfully accepts an afternoon of disrupting the goths who hang out in the coffee shop to have serious conversations as an alternative to making fun of her friend, and they entertain themselves until the guy behind the counter takes a look at their row of plastic cups and says, "Look, if you girls aren't going to buy anything else..." at which point they head over to Abby's house.

Walking down a side street, Abby takes Erin's hand, almost like it's no big deal except for her nervous glance at Erin's face as she does it. Erin feels potential energy building between their fingers, like it could turn into anything. She wonders if Abby feels it too.

  


When they get to Abby's house, though, they go straight to the basement couch, and Abby looks at her seriously and a little sadly.

"If you really don't want to talk about the ghost, I'll never mention it again. I didn't know how much it bothered you, and I'm sorry." Erin opens her mouth to say it's alright, but Abby isn't done. "Just hear me out first. I've been told that hearing people out first is a friend thing."

"Okay..." Erin says uncertainly.

"I know you have your countdown and everything, but you're not really thinking about life after high school. You could move somewhere else and pretend you never had your childhood. I bet money you'd get away with it. You could have your white picket fence, have some career or other, marry some guy..." Erin almost protests this, but she suspects that's not actually the point of this conversation, and she's curious what Abby is getting at.

"You could do it — you'd probably do it well — but you'd just be playing along with these small-minded people and their small-minded game. They'd never know you could have done more, and neither would you.

"I never saw a ghost, but I had my own ways of cementing my place in the social pecking order at my old school, and I did it pretty effectively." Abby is briefly quiet, then continues. "But I have no desire to be normal, to grow up and let people pretend I was always like them. I want everyone who beat me up on the playground to remember what a weirdo Abby Yates was. And someday they are going to be reminded of that all the time. Because I am going to change the world, and everyone I ever knew is going to wish I'd invited them to help.

"I guess that's a weird way to think about revenge. But it works for me. And you told me about your ghost... and there _is_ no science of ghosts yet, because all the normal kids are too busy laughing at things they don't understand to see what's in front of their noses. This would be low-hanging fruit for serious study, and once we figured it out, it would be really big. I wasn't kidding about the Nobel Prize."

Abby takes a deep breath, nervous. "If you tell me not to, I'll never say boo again, no pun intended. But do you want to change the world with me? I can't think of anyone I'd rather ask."

Erin is briefly dizzy. Choosing to be Ghost Girl on purpose? Choosing to be Ghost Girl for the rest of her life? But she sees through Abby's eyes how little she has to lose, and how much she has to gain. She looks at Abby, leaning forward on the couch with her hands wrapped around a knee, tense as she waits for Erin's answer. There is really no decision at all.

"Yes," Erin says, "I'm in." She revels in Abby's look of delight, then affects a serious expression and sticks out a hand for a handshake. "Erin Gilbert. Looking forward to working with you."

Abby grins and holds out her own hand. "Abigail Yates. Likewise."

Erin does not have a lot of experience with this, but she knows she's not mistaking the spark of potential energy as their hands touch. Erin is only a little surprised at her own daring when she catches Abby's eyes and says "Can I kiss you?" Abby's eyebrows rise in startlement, and she nods quickly, leaning forward like she's afraid Erin might vanish. But there's no chance of that — Erin closes the distance and their lips meet, and potential energy somehow turns into actual energy without diminishing its potential — scientifically unsound but unquestionably what is happening.

Erin has 514 days of high school left, and that isn't nearly enough for everything she wants to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Indigo Girls' "Power of Two", which probably dates from close enough in time to Erin and Abby's presumed high school years for practical purposes.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, psocoptera.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Smarter than the tricks played on your heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11990079) by [Annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annapods/pseuds/Annapods)




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